Rue Posted February 20, 2014 Author Report Posted February 20, 2014 I see I have access again! Yeeha. Well...if she's doing this for 'free advertising'...that's fine. That at least makes sense. It's still not how I would go about advertising a high-end instrument...but then again, look at how successful I am...lol. ***p.s. I'm more than happy to help get the buzz going...all in the name of the economy, helping along the acquistion of luxury goods, name-dropping...all that fun stuff...
~ Ben Conover Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 '' I am quite sure for her it's worth every cent of those $149k. ''It would have to be or she'd feel daft having paid so much for it. LOL.
~ Ben Conover Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 Dunno how you anyone charges that much and finish the peg ends so badly. Oh, perhaps the peg ends were antiqued too ! LOL.
Carl Stross Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 Weren't the recent high (over $100k) priced contemporary instruments bench copies, i.e. painstaking detailed copies of famous Cremonese instruments? And didn't the owners die? You mean there is a connection between the two ?????
hendrik Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 Maybe it will still end up on Tarisio. Any guesses what it might fetch? (I'm still curious about the "ex - Milstein Roth" ; what did that one go for everything included?)
Jeffrey Holmes Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 Jeez... What's all this buzz about? Somebody here want to buy that fiddle and get a better price? She's got the right to ask anything she wants for it. That doesn't mean she'll get it, and it doesn't mean she won't get it... the risk/reward is hers. Look. If it sells for a high price, great. Maybe that will allow a few other makers to raise their prices eventually to fill in the vacuum. If it doesn't, OK. Either way, Sam's already sold it... as was the case with the Stern fiddle... so he may get "airtime", but not a stuffed wallet. I figure he charges whatever the market at this point anyway. I'm not aware he's increasing his output, nor that his wait list is shrinking.
Berl Mendenhall Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 Well said Jeff. It's her fiddle, she can do whatever she wants.
DarylG Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 On the flip side, it's a well proven concert soloists violin. You might even call it a bargain when compared to the instruments of her peers.
AtlVcl Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 You are making some outrageous implications here. Name one...
James M. Jones Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 I for one would like to see her get her price...a rising tide raises all boats. and it's nice to see a growing appreciation for contemporary works. Who knows, with this kind of recognition for "new" violins modern makers might be able to compete with a large pizza when it comes to feeding a family of four.
Torbjörn Zethelius Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 Name one... "A man of high integrity though he may have been, it didn't cost Isaac Stern anything to praise Sam's violin." –It's not worth praising? Did he not like it? "He helped further the career of a wonderful young-ish maker, who surely wrote off the cost as "marketing." – Which cost did Sam write off as "marketing"?
Carl Stross Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 "A man of high integrity though he may have been, it didn't cost Isaac Stern anything to praise Sam's violin." –It's not worth praising? Did he not like it? "He helped further the career of a wonderful young-ish maker, who surely wrote off the cost as "marketing." – Which cost did Sam write off as "marketing"? You're wasting good keyboard.
Christopher Jacoby Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 Sam's instruments are amazing. I don't know why his work is being rubbed at. The price is the funny part.
mandm Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 Says here that the violin made for Stern in 1994 sold for $130K at Tarisio in 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Zygmuntowicz , so the price isn't outrageous. Given the reviews of Dylana playing hers however, one wonders why she is selling it, and hopes the reasons are only happy ones. She's selling the violin because she has 3 of them.
Carl Stross Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 Sam's instruments are amazing. I don't know why his work is being rubbed at. The price is the funny part. You can't use the word "amazing" anymore. Everybody nowadays makes "amazing" violins.
Torbjörn Zethelius Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 You're wasting good keyboard. carl, do explain yourself.
David Beard Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 Dunno how you anyone charges that much and finish the peg ends so badly. Oh, perhaps the peg ends were antiqued too ! LOL. Perfect fittings aren't the heart and soul of a 100k or 1mil sort of instrument, but they might be for some of the under 5k fiddles. If a particular concert artist finds that instruments that satisfy them are normally historical and in the many 100k to multi mil range, then finding a modern instrument that actually satisfies that person at under 200k might seem in context to be a bargain.
Christopher Jacoby Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 Well, that's great! Carl thinks my violins are amazing.
martin swan Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 When a dealer asks for a price that's regarded as exorbitant, the dealer is a criminal, so I'm not sure I agree that a private seller is entitled to ask whatever price they choose. That aside, let's take it back to basics. Sound is not a consideration in pricing - anyone prepared to do the legwork can find a stupendously good violin, new or old, for £20,000 or less. The difference between what Sam Z would charge for a new violin and the price being asked by this seller is entirely to do with provenance ie. this was my violin (or in this case one of my violins), I'm a famous player, I have added value to the violin. The seller is inviting a direct comparison between the value she adds to a Sam Z violin by having owned it and the value that Isaac Stern added to a Sam Z violin by owning it. She claims by the asking price that she adds more value than he did. Or maybe she's misunderstood what the Tarisio price for Stern's or Ricci's violin tells us - it certainly doesn't mean that the new baseline price for a Sam Z is $145K. As for what a great new violin should cost, there are a lot of perspectives on this. On the one hand you might argue that a fluid and undistracted professional maker can produce 4 violins a month, and that therefore a high unit price might be $15,000. On the other hand, you might recognise that a certain kind of player just isn't going to buy a new violin if it's too cheap. I don't know what Sam Z charges, but in Christophe Landon's inimitable phrase "sexy girl is not going to marry plumber" - you have to tailor your pricing to the clientele you're pursuing.
AtlVcl Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 "A fool and his money are soon parted." She won't get her price, but there's no harm in trying. Sam Z is one of the most well known* of contemporary makers, there may be someone out there who really wants one, and not willing or able to wait 3 years. If it were me, I'd advertise it in a place where all classical musicians meet, the "International Musician", but then she might become the subject of ridicule. She's simply not famous, or even very well known. * Thanks at least in part because of the Stern item in his estate...
Don Noon Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 What is the difference between what a top maker charges for a standard model with straight varnish, and what he charges for a meticulous bench copy of a specific instrument, duplicating every scratch and nick?
skiingfiddler Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 It looks like Roger's admonition might be applicable here. Taken from another thread, my emphasis in bold: Yes I understand that and in this case if someone were to ask me privately I would agree. Perhaps the best way is simply to sent the inquirer a private message. I just think that we are walking on thin ice when we start discussing values here. Before you know it we will be discussing the relative values of living makers or instruments that are for sale at rival shops. We have had this before with comparisons of different living makers works. I believe that such comparisons are unethical and I believe that price comparisons or valuation can also quickly become unethical. I understand not wanting to let people be ripped off, but perhaps we just need to put a (loose) lid on this one.
MeyerFittings Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 "When a dealer asks for a price that's regarded as exorbitant, the dealer is a criminal," Is that true in the US? Is she going through a dealer? I can ask anything that I would like for my house. It looks like Roger's admonition might be applicable here. Taken from another thread: Agree.
martin swan Posted February 20, 2014 Report Posted February 20, 2014 "When a dealer asks for a price that's regarded as exorbitant, the dealer is a criminal," Is that true in the US? Is she going through a dealer? I can ask anything that I would like for my house. No I don't think there's any legal point to answer. I was just making the observation that when a dealer asks twice the price that might be arrived at by a conference of peers (rather than a conference pear), the trade would take a very dim view of that. I suspect that similar logic applies to a very public "private" sale.
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